Cereal
by Alexia Eve
Summary: Dawn reflects, between seasons five and six. Vignette.


Cereal  
  
  
She pours the corn flakes out of the box into the bowl already half-filled with milk. She seemed less likely to spill this way. It doesn't surprise her, then, that she's misjudged, and with each flake that falls into the white liquid several drops splatter out onto the counter.  
  
That's just the way things seem to work these days.  
  
She's known that this time would be coming for a while, and that everything else was just postponing the inevitable. She knew the expectations for everyone, and she knew that not one of them was up for it. This had happened before, had happened a few times. There was the upswing, which would last several days, maybe even a couple of weeks. And then the inevitable storm clouds that ruin every day at the beach, and everything would be back to what amounted to normal at her house.  
  
She had meant to eat the corn flakes this morning, she really had. But like every other day, she ends up standing there, holding the box in her hand and watching as they absorb the milk, grow soggy, and drown in the increasingly murky depths of the cereal bowl.  
  
When her sister jumped through the portal, when she gave her life to save the world, everyone had tried to console her. They'd told her how brave her sister was, and how much good she had done in her twenty years or so, and how now she had to live. That was what her sister had said. iLive... for me./i  
  
And she'd obeyed, or at least she'd tried to. It was hard being fifteen and always having to stay home, but having to stay out of everyone's hair at the same time. It was hard to understand that everything happened for a purpose when she had to watch her mother die, her sister die.  
  
It's still hard.  
  
Those were the times that everyone had told her to stay strong: when her father left them, when her sister ran away for a whole summer, when her mother was sick, when she found out she was barely even a person, when her mother died, when her sister gave her life to stop the end of the world.  
  
And every one of those times, she would... for a while. She'd be the model sister, daughter, friend, smiling and sweet, doing everything she could for people. But it always somehow got messed up.  
  
That was just how she was.  
  
There were the freakouts sometimes. She couldn't help them. When she had found out that she wasn't real... what had they expected her to do? She was fourteen. She didn't want to be the cause that could make the world live or die. She wanted to think about boys and make-up, wanted to steal Buffy's shirts that weren't even her size and fantasize about being grown up.  
  
It's hard to pretend to be grown up when you've only been on the planet long enough to be an infant.  
  
And she hadn't meant to ruin Buffy's birthday that year, really she hadn't. She hadn't meant for the fact that she wasn't even real to infringe on her older sister's right to presents in the wake of a bad break-up.  
  
Not that Riley was such a loss. But he had made Buffy happy, sort of. In a way.  
  
And after that, after the time she stood in front of everyone with the light reflecting off the knife in one hand while the blood glistened on the other, she'd been okay for a while. It had been like all the other times. People noticed. Buffy woke up in the mornings and made them both cinnamon toast and omlettes, and they ate them together and talked for almost a week. Buffy was a good big sister sometimes.  
  
Almost all the time, really. But she had a job. She was important. It wasn't too hard to understand why she couldn't be home a lot of the time, or why sometimes her sister's problems were relegated to "later" on a permanent basis.  
  
Understanding never makes things hurt less.  
  
They don't look the same, not really. The monks made her out of her sister, but that was just genetics. That wasn't anything real. Buffy was made up of equal parts Mom and Dad. She was made up of equal parts Buffy and magic. Buffy's flesh and blood- reanimated, but flesh and blood nonetheless- and she's smoke and mirrors. That's just the way these things work.  
  
The corn flakes have long since died, but she can't look away. The cereal bowl is like a vortex. She can't help but wonder if this is what it looked like to face down into a portal and jump anyway. She can't help but consider whether or not this was what showed up behind Angel when Buffy kissed him and killed him.  
  
She's spent a lot of time lately wondering what Buffy's been through. She wants to know what's going on inside her sister's head.  
  
She knows that the past few years have been rough on everyone. Maybe Mom's death was even harder on Buffy, who had to support everyone, who had to be there for everyone.  
  
But she can't remember doing much but crying- a resurrection spell here, a tantrum there, but nothing major. Nothing Buffy hadn't tried also. Not really. But Buffy's were complemented by Giles's calming words, while she just had a sister who was suddenly emotionally dead.  
  
Buffy had been the one who overreacted. Buffy was the one who dropped out of school (she wasn't ALLOWED to, that's what the principal said, just because of her age) and dropped out of everyone's life. She was the one who severed all ties with everyone.  
  
It's hard to support everyone else when you're falling too.  
  
She uses the spoon to swirl the cereal counter-clockwise. When Tara had been crazy- just temporarily, of course; right now, Tara is, really, the only sane one in the group- she had called her a swirling ball of green energy. She much preferred now, when she was sweetie or Dawnie. It was a lot nicer to be nicknamed and babied than to be transposed into a theoretical scientific bubble of thought. She doesn't even fit into Einstein's equation. Energy is mass times the speed of light squared. But she isn't. She's just a girl.  
  
She hadn't asked Buffy to sacrifice herself. She never in a million years wanted her sister to die for her. It had been stupid, really. They hadn't known it would work- probably didn't even think it would. It was a shot in the dark. It had saved the world, but it had been a stupid plan, really. A stupid plan that was Buffy's solution in a post-catatonic frenzy.  
  
She knows that a lot of people are mad at her, that they think she could have stopped Buffy. She thought about that a lot too. She used to lay awake at nights worrying about it. She still does, sometimes. But that summer was the worst. She would go in and see the robot that looked like her sister but wasn't, doing all the things that Buffy did when she was trying to make Dawn feel better. But a cup of hot chocolate prepared perfectly by a mechanical sibling can never taste as good as one that your sister accidentally set on fire. It's just not the same. Some days she would see Not Buffy, making French Toast as if she were programmed to (because, to be truthful, she was), and she would have to spin around and go upstairs. She couldn't watch anymore.  
  
How could she have stopped her, anyway? She's five or six years younger than Buffy as she remembers it. Buffy's memories make her even younger. How old is she, really? It's not even two years since the monks saw fit to make her. Buffy's bigger, too- she weighs less, but she's still more fit than her sister can ever hope to be. And she's strong. Buffy's like a superhero. Plus, Buffy's really smart. Way smarter than her little sister. If Buffy said to do something, she couldn't not do it.  
  
If they thought it hurt them so much, they didn't know what it was like. Tara and Willow were great, but they weren't a big sister. They weren't Mom. They weren't Dad, not even a dad who hadn't called in months. They were just two really sweet witches who took her mother's place in the house, and then broke up, got addicted to magic, and for some reason kept forgetting to help her make dinner. They let her use the stove.  
  
It was worth noting that she hadn't set the house on fire once. And it wasn't her fault that they couldn't clean the stainless steel pan. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes.  
  
And then the whole thing with Spike. She just wanted her sister to be happy, she really did. Date a boy (hey, Xander is single now). Date a girl (Tara's single too, and it would be nice to have her in the family- but Buffy never seems to take that hint, or if she does, she isn't ready to bat for that team yet). Date a demon; that's okay too. Buffy's slept with the undead before, and that Clem guy she knows is pretty cute. In fact, in theory, Spike could be a good choice.  
  
But in practice, she still hasn't told her sister they're even dating. She knows, of course; they all do, although everyone else seems to be trying to pretend that they don't. If Buffy can't even tell her sister that the reason she's late for dinner again is that she had to pause for a sex fix, then she doesn't want to know about it.  
  
In fact, Buffy shouldn't really be late for dinner anyway. Couldn't she go out for sex AFTER a meal? Would that be so hard?  
  
When Buffy was her age, she'd kissed lots of boys. Back at their first school, that is, where Buffy was just the Queen of Cool. She used to sit in the living room, watching cartoons but really watching the reflection behind her as Buffy would bring an endless stream of guys home. She was so cool.  
  
When Hemery burned down, Buffy didn't date for a while. The tacit understanding became that boys were just one of the many rebellious activities the Summers girls would not be tackling. Boys led to yelling. Boys led to crying. Boys led to divorce and expulsion and vampires and heartbreak. Summers Girls didn't need boys. Summers Girls blast Gloria Gaynor on the car ride from L.A. to Sunnydale and sing "I Will Survive," mother and her two daughters, and everything's normal for a minute.  
  
But nothing can be normal, because two of the three of them have died and the other isn't even really alive to begin with.  
  
She's probably going to be late for school again. That happens a lot lately. There's too much to think about to worry about geometry. When every day could be your last, you can't stop to worry about Pythagorean triples.  
  
When Buffy jumped off the tower, was she thinking about triangles, or was she thinking about an afterlife? Was she even thinking?  
  
The last morning they'd spent together before that, they'd both had Fruit Loops. They'd sat in the living room and watched the news, and she had made fun of the lead newscaster's toupee, and Buffy had laughed. It had been nice.  
  
Had that made a difference? When Buffy stood up there and saw her sister tied up, crying, and bleeding, had she thought of Toucan Sam and decided to make the sacrifice?  
  
She pours the cereal down the drain. The flakes have almost all curled into strange shapes and now they stick to the sink. She rinses it thoroughly before grabbing her backpack.  
  
Buffy's still not awake.  
  
She double-locks the door. Not that it'll keep demons away, but it's best not to take any chances.  
  
She thinks she might skip breakfast tomorrow.  
  
It just might be easier. 


End file.
